The longer you go by yourself the weirder you get, and the weirder you get the longer you go by yourself.

I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors.

I don't think conservativism is about a deficiency. I think it's about a commitment to an ideology that has to in some ways devalue the usefulness of empathy. I do think empathy can be learned. And enhanced.

The etiquette of blurbs means it's not hard to not blurb something (if it's not by a friend, or student): everyone knows how many books you're deluged with. You can just say you never got to it.

Does research get in the way of the story? It certainly can. Anything can, given that as writers we're all geniuses at procrastination. But mostly research teaches me about the world. Which often shows me the way, in terms of the story.

I do find stories - or literary fiction - an apt form for analyzing the world. And especially for trying to imagine the other. An agenda, again, that seems more important now than ever.

I very much like people. I don't much like writers who don't.